The Ukulele Instructional Song and Iain Lee

"Mummy, we done another sing".

At Christmas we get pretty busy, so I couldn't do this blog. It's January, we're not especially busy, so I'm doing it now.

Just before the madness of Christmas, or "Chrimbo", as some people insist on calling it, we made another song. It's the 3rd song/video we've put on our You Tube channel. And it's by far the least popular. Yeah!

It's a song about the ukulele. Not only is it "about" the ukulele, but it tries to teach you how how to play the ukulele. Then, when you've learnt the three chords in the song, you'll be able to play the song itself. I'm confusing myself.

By a stroke of luck, whilst we were recording it, Iain Lee asked us if we'd print his t-shirts for him. We wet our pants a little, but remained cool enough to ask him to feature in our new video. When he agreed, we really did wet out pants. For real.

The video features lots of our friends and shop customers, thank you!

How To Bake Bread - The Bread Song

Everyone likes bread don't they? And everyone likes songs too. So what could be better than a song about bread? Not very much we reckon, and so we've produced just that. But it's not just any old song about bread - this one gives you step-by-step instructions on how you (yes, YOU) can make your own loaves and therefore become a baker. One listen could potentially change your life forever. Well, it could, couldn't it? Anyway the recording features the entire Balcony team, and it would be wrong of us not to mention our very cool 'Real Man Bake Bread' t-shirt at some point here -so we just have. Marvellous.

Iain Lee Appreciation

You know those companies that just throw free stuff about to EVERYONE in hope that they'll get some free publicity? Well, I can state without a second's hestation that that isn't us. I can count on 2 fingers the things we have sent to "celebrities" for free.

When we started doing Balcony Shirts "full time", about 6 years ago, we discovered Iain Lee (or "that bloke from the 11 O'Clock show" as we called him at the time) on LBC radio. He made us laugh and stuff, wicked eh? So we sent him a flight bag with a fake logo from the Lost TV series on it because he liked Lost. It was probably illegal. Oh well.

He was asking for free stuff over the Twitter the other day, as a joke, because someone asked him if people sent him free stuff, so we obliged and offered him one of our Ukulele Hero T-shirts. He accepted. This is boring isn't it? Yeah. Well, to cut a short story even shorter we sent him a T-shirt and he plugged us. That was nice of him and we weren't expecting it. We had the busiest night on the website we'd had since Christmas, so that was brilliant, because it's pretty tough selling T-shirts over the internet.

But it's fun. x

A Promise Is A Promise...

I was taking pictures of the shop today for our new website and these little scamps walked past. They made me promise I'd put a picture of them on the website so I have. They will check later on the main site and not see themselves, they will become angry and come back to the shop and demand an explanation, I will show them this blog post. They will apologise. It will be a beautiful moment.

Eastenders makers deny new product placement laws are "ruining the show"

The makers of hit BBC soap "Eastenders" have angrily denied accusations that new product placement laws are ruining the show. The Broadcasting giant was bombarded with complaints last night after popular characters Kat and Alfie Moon screamed "THANK WORCESTER FOR THAT" after finally being reunited with their estranged baby. It is not the first time the show has attracted attention for it's spurious product placement. Only last week, show stalwart Dot Branning was heard to utter the phrase "You can't get quicker than a Kwit-Fit fitter" when suggesting where Max should get his vintage Mercedes serviced.

The Good, The Bad, and The Ukulele‏

With ukulele sales at our Uxbridge shop reaching a level that has got us actively considering changing it's name to The Uxbridge Ukulele Centre we thought that this might be a good time to share this wonderful rendition of 'The Good, The Bad and The Ugly' with you, which in addition to demonstating just how good a ukulele can sound gives us a chance to mention that we also stock a wallet that relates to said film.

Ukuleles and wallets available in a t-shirt shop - whatever next? LH.

Mum! We're on the telly!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8jXN5-z1Y8

Back in September Windsor Street in Uxbridge saw scenes of apparent jubilation as a commercial to raise funds and awareness for the British Legion Poppy Day appeal was filmed there, with much of the action taking place outside the Balcony Shirts shop. As we reported here at the time various Balcony staff members were spotted performing opportunistic high-fives every time the camera panned across the shop, and while it's probably best for all concerned that none of these rather peculiar antics are featured in the finished article the shop itself is clearly visable in both the long and short versions of the film. If you'd like to see it for yourself then click here, and please remember to buy a poppy this November.